I Copy the Authorities of the Four Calamities

Chapter 390: Last Morning

With only two days left before the leviathan ship would carry them back to Zenith, the end of the winter break hung over the compound. It didn’t feel like a fading away; instead, the looming departure sharpened every remaining hour. The compound continued its normal rhythms, but with the quiet, shared acknowledgment that their time here was almost up. Old Shen’s cooking reflected it—his portions grew heavier, the meals transforming into the lavish feasts he only prepared when he wanted to leave a lasting warmth in the bones of the people he cared about.

Before the sun had even threatened to rise, Vane stood alone in the outer ring.

The pre-dawn cold was biting, but he didn’t feel it. He ran through the eight forms, silencing his mind. No overthinking, no analytical breakdowns. He just let his body move, executing the sequence exactly as it had been drilled into him in the frozen expanse of the northern territory, and exactly as he did it now at home. The flow was seamless.

He came back to a neutral stance, exhaling a long plume of white breath.

"How long?" he asked.

Ashe was standing at the edge of the training ring, wrapped in simple compound linen. He hadn’t heard her approach.

"The fourth form," she answered softly. "I’ve been watching since the fourth form."

He looked at her. She wasn’t assessing him like a Warlord scanning a territory; she was reading his ambient aura with the quiet, intimate attention she reserved only for things that mattered deeply to her. It was an intuition she had been honing since their first year, sharpened into perfect accuracy by two years of standing by his side.

"It announces itself differently than the others," she noted.

"Yes."

"When you run them all in a continuous sequence, it’s..." She trailed off, searching for the right word in the cold air. "It’s complete," she finally decided. "It looks complete."

Vane crossed the stone ring. Ashe watched him approach, her crimson eyes softening. She looked at him without the burden of needing to manage the situation, simply existing with him in the dark, surrounded by the worn stone and the looming shadow of the mountain above.

He pulled her in and kissed her.

The morning was still pitch black around them. Ashe reached up and gripped the front of his jacket. It was the same grip she had used that chaotic night in the outer market quarter, but all the frantic emergency had bled out of it. Now, she was just holding him. Grounding him. Vane threaded his hands into her hair, and they stayed like that for a long, quiet time.

When they finally broke apart, she didn’t step back, keeping her forehead resting against his.

"Zenith in two days," she whispered.

"Yes."

She pulled back just enough to study his face, memorizing the lines and shadows with careful, devoted attention. Then, she slipped her hand into his, and together, they walked back inside.

At the seventh hour, Vane walked into the kitchen and found Valerica already there.

She hadn’t sent word that she was looking for him. She had simply come in for tea, found the kitchen empty, and waited. As Vane walked in, she prepared a second cup with the effortless, automatic grace of someone who had completely integrated into his space over the last two years. She slid the steaming porcelain across the table.

He looked down at it. "Fifth version?"

"The altitude problem is resolved in the fifth version," she replied smoothly, taking a seat across from him. "The highland source issue was a failure of the supply chain, not a flaw in the specification itself. I’ve noted the proper alternatives."

Vane picked up the cup. The flavor, the depth—it was perfect. Whatever adjustments she had made in this fifth iteration, she had nailed them. He didn’t point it out, because she already knew.

Across the table, Valerica’s usual composed mask was entirely gone. Her violet eyes were soft, stripped of their usual defensive walls. Without a word, she stood up, walked around the table, and took the seat right beside him. She leaned over, resting her head gently against his shoulder, her eyes fixed on the blank kitchen wall. She didn’t offer a justification for the sudden closeness, and she didn’t need to.

Vane wrapped his arm around her.

"Fifth version," she whispered into the quiet room.

"I’ll make sure to follow the fourth page this time," he promised.

She was quiet for a long moment before a faint, fond threat edged into her voice. "You’d better."

Sunlight found Isole before she found sleep.

She had been awake since before dawn, her desk scattered with the documents she had been tirelessly cross-referencing against Nyx’s archive materials. The more she pulled at the historical thread, the clearer the picture became. She realized morning had arrived only when the text on her parchment was suddenly illuminated by the rising sun.

Vane found her in the sitting area a short time later.

She looked up from the sprawling mess of papers, glancing between him and the bright window. "I didn’t sleep."

"I know."

"The thread is getting clearer," she said, tapping a weathered page. "Once we’re back at Zenith and Nyx brings out her set, we can lay the entire thing out." She looked up at him, her exhaustion eclipsed by quiet intensity. "It matters, Vane."

"I know it does."

Isole gazed at him, the analytical fire in her eyes melting into something profoundly warm. She stood up, crossing the space between them, and wrapped her arms around him. It wasn’t a tight, desperate grip, but a full, secure embrace. She rested her chin on his shoulder.

"The Silver Wood was twelve days," she murmured into his collar.

"I know."

"I am not going back until the summer." Her voice left no room for argument; it was a settled truth. "I just wanted you to know I made that decision."

Vane held her closer. "Good."

She made a quiet, contented sound and didn’t move to pull away, letting the morning light wash over them.

On their final morning, Vane found Nyx on the outer wall.

She was already there, sitting with her legs dangling dangerously over the sheer drop, watching Korreth wake up in the morning light. The latent energy of her Dreamscape hummed at a low, resting pulse, leaving her opal eyes soft and unfocused. She heard his footsteps on the stone but didn’t turn around.

He sat down on the ledge beside her. For a while, they simply watched the city.

"The document," she finally said. "What Isole found, and what I brought back... when we put them together, they’re going to give us the exact coordinates for the Dark World frequency." She kept her eyes on the sprawling rooftops. "I have been working toward this for two years."

Vane turned to look at her. The mountain wind tossed her lavender hair. Her captivating opal eyes, which had spent thirty-one grueling days navigating a treacherous dreamscape, were now fixed on the real world with absolute, unwavering direction.

"Nyx," he said softly.

She turned to face him.

He leaned in and kissed her right there on the perilous edge of the Razar compound, suspended between the mountain and the city, enveloped by the bright, freezing winter wind.

She kissed him back fiercely, her hands coming up to grip his collar. She held nothing back, pouring every ounce of her fiery, unapologetic intent into the moment.

When she finally pulled back, she stayed hovering just inches from his face.

"Tell me when we get back," Vane said.

"Everything," she promised, her voice a low, thrilling vow. "When we get back."

Two days later, the leviathan was ready to depart.

The entire household gathered at the compound gates. Ryuken stood far back in the doorway of the inner sanctum—maintaining the stoic, measured distance he always required for farewells. Above him, the lamp in the high window burned steadily. Old Shen stood near the courtyard, trying to hide the melancholy of a man whose table was about to become agonizingly empty again.

Ashe was the last to walk through the heavy iron gates.

She stopped and looked back across the courtyard at her father. Ryuken met her gaze. He didn’t say a word. She didn’t either. The silence between them was heavy, yet completely understood.

She turned and walked through the gate.

Behind them, the heavy doors of the Razar compound slammed shut.

By the second hour, the massive leviathan ship pulled out of Korreth’s eastern port. The eastern continent slowly shrank into the horizon behind them, while the vast, unbroken ocean opened up ahead. Zenith was a three-day journey away, and the challenges of their second semester were waiting on the other side of the water.

Deep within the hull, the engine roared to life.